pdelirium
10-31-2005, 03:08 AM
After many years of playing with dynamics and rendering with just some very basic modeling I finally decided to start learning how to model realistic objects. I bought ZBrush and really love it for organic modeling (heads, animals, etc). I've been getting nice results with displacement maps and Metal Ray.
Then I moved on to polygon and sub-d modeling in Maya. I want to render everything in Mental Ray and I've found it a bit frustrating with sub-d's. I've had good success with polygons and the smooth proxy but I really like the flexibility of sub-d's. Unfortunately, if I need to crease something I can pretty much forget about rendering it in Mental Ray. I've been able to convert a lot of my objects to polys from sub-d's but objects that have flat surfaces that turn into curved surfaces (indentations, etc.) really don't survive this conversion very well. The flat surfaces tend to end up with slight bulges around the creased edges after I convert to polys.
So, I have a very general question. What tips do you have for modeling in Maya and rendering in Mental Ray? What tools/operation should be avoided? What is the best way (if there is any) to take advantage of sub-d's, including creasing (or is there an alternative)?
Then I moved on to polygon and sub-d modeling in Maya. I want to render everything in Mental Ray and I've found it a bit frustrating with sub-d's. I've had good success with polygons and the smooth proxy but I really like the flexibility of sub-d's. Unfortunately, if I need to crease something I can pretty much forget about rendering it in Mental Ray. I've been able to convert a lot of my objects to polys from sub-d's but objects that have flat surfaces that turn into curved surfaces (indentations, etc.) really don't survive this conversion very well. The flat surfaces tend to end up with slight bulges around the creased edges after I convert to polys.
So, I have a very general question. What tips do you have for modeling in Maya and rendering in Mental Ray? What tools/operation should be avoided? What is the best way (if there is any) to take advantage of sub-d's, including creasing (or is there an alternative)?